Healthy living and DNA: BBC News Review

Your DNA can influence how long you live, but it’s still worth leading a healthy life, according to new research. In the first study of its kind, scientists explored whether the negative impact of genetics on life expectancy could be reduced by a healthy lifestyle. Habits to extend life include regular exercise, a healthy diet, no smoking and getting enough sleep.

Key words and phrases

prolong - extend the duration
🔎 We’ve got lots to do today, so let’s not prolong this meeting unnecessarily.
🔎 He’s hopeful that the surgery will prolong his life, not shorten it.

offset - do something good to reduce the effect of something bad
🔎 Planting trees helps offset carbon emissions by absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
🔎 Eating a balanced diet can offset the negative effects of stress on the body.

tweaks - a small adjustment
🔎 After a few tweaks to the recipe, it was perfect.
🔎 We often make small tweaks to our video scripts before recording.

✔️ 0:00 - Introduction
✔️ 0:27 - Story
✔️ 1:24 - Headline 1
✔️ 3:29 - Headline 2
✔️ 4:56 - Headline 3
✔️ 6:40 - Language summary

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[bbclearningenglish]

Go to our website to download the audio and transcript, and for a practice quiz:

[sueliishiyama]

If you want to prolong your life, you should make tweaks on your lifestyle in order to offset genetics.

[Gaoluubi]

Over the past time, I often go to bed until midnight. I should tweak my sleep time to offset my health and mind to be healthier, resulting in my prolonged life expectancy.

[dieutrang]

Thanks so much. I'm really interested in this lesson.

[BriantheBrick]

George tried to prolong eating his tuna and cucumber sandwich, but he loved tuna and cucumber sandwiches so much he couldn't help himself. He ate it but didn't like the new type of canned tuna he bought. George tweaked the recipe and changed the tuna to the old type. The old tuna was saltier, and it offsets the bland cucumber. The tweak did the trick! The sandwich tasted very nice after!

[huong]

Thank you, BBC. Neil and Georgie - my favorite teachers

[fioresepaolo]

This lesson is also clear for me. And with that I have said all because I'm Italian. Thanks a lot for your efforts.

[joyyyy]

Thank you for providing the information about prolonging a life. Healthy lifestyle can offset the negative impacts on our lives. We should keep in mind and make some tweaks.

[yasminmelias]

This was an awesome piece of language learning and vocabulary buildingly. Very engaging and interesting too. Thank you BBC Learning Georgie and Neil.

[ncgxwrk]

Neil looks a little bit tipsy at 1:40 :)

[mehmet.albyrk]

Topics and their way of teaching are amazing as usual but I think the duration of their conversation to explain sth more well should be lenghten thanx a lot

[mdabdullatifsagor]

Last few weeks I followed this channel. I really love your's content.

[toiyeuem]

prolong, offset, tweak.... are so amazing

[soniakapur]

I have made tweaks in my routine to watch this video.

[maryamishfaq]

I prolonged my study period today to offset my yesterday's absence in lecture and made some tweaks in my time table.

[sdvdiqn]

I recently started watching this channel. I’ve known about it for a while but never got around to it.
I keep listening to it over and over, hoping to get through the whole thing because there’s so much to learn.

[milly]

Many thanks for your usual wisdom to teach us good English.

[jiafengshen]

If you want to prolong you life, you should make tweaks on your lifestyle in order to offset genetics.

[lopezaguilar]

3:58 what does bring something back up mean?

[Wajid_Ali]

Why did you dismiss your BBC English Learning App from the Play store?